


Graduation Day

by Chibifukurou



Category: Bandom, Invitation to the Game, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Crossover, Dystopia, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 00:18:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/437028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibifukurou/pseuds/Chibifukurou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All I wanted was a family of my own. Why did my right to have one have to hinge on getting a job? Why did I have to be one of the Unemployed? (Written for the Crossover Big Bang on LJ)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graduation Day

**Author's Note:**

> A HUGE thank you goes out to chibi-lurel for not only making me some truly awesome art; but doing an awesome beta job. Not to mention taking on a completely new fandom!

  


[Art by Chibi-Lurrel](http://chibi-lurrel.livejournal.com/287364.html)

# # #

June 9, 2125: Pencey Academy

# # #

I suppose there are a lot of places where I could start this story. I could start with how America fell into ruins. How the pandemic swept in and almost destroyed us all, leaved us no choice but to rely on more and more robots.

Or I could start with how when we’re children, we were taken from our parents and sent to schools where we became virtual prisoners. 

But I think I'm going to start with the day my life changed completely. Graduation Day. The day I had to to grow up. I’d always known that my childhood would come to an end. So this isn't a record of how the world you lived in failed or anything. This is the story of how my life changed once I discovered that the world was so much larger than I had ever dreamed.

My story starts nine months after I turned 18 on a pretty average day in June of 2125.

It started like most days at the school. Boring as hell…The only interesting thing we ever did was try and drag Gerard out of his bed before one of the house-keeper robots dumped him out of it and we all got demerits. Ray was always best at getting him up in a hurry, since he wasn't afraid to dump him out of the bed or splash a cup of cold water on him. But if we wanted him to wake up in any kind of a good mood there was nobody better than Bob. I wasn't allowed to get him up after the one time I tried to dive bomb him and managed to give him a concussion instead. 

Which was totally unfair – I’d been trying to help. Ray was attempting to shake Gerard awake with liberal threats of dumped him off of the bed, when Bob swept in. He was the only one of us that was in another Dorm. so it always took him longer to realize when we were having a wake up crisis.

He took one look at the lot of us, in that way he had, before he marched over to the bed and grabbed Gerard up, blankets and all and disappeared into the communal bathroom with him.

I made to follow them, but sometimes being the shortest member of our little group sucked, because Mikey grabbed me in a headlock, boney elbows and all and dragged me off before I could. “Come on Frankie. Just leave them alone. You know Gerard doesn't like it when we watch him take his pills."

“Shit! What does he think I’m going to do, stare at him like he’s a freak?” 

"Language, student 224," buzzed the housekeeper droid that had snuck up behind me.

"Sorry, ma'am!" I yelled before running as fast as I could away from her. Stupid mother-hen bots.

Since she didn't buzz at me to stop, I figured they weren't going to do anything to me. It would be kind of pointless gesture anyway, since once we graduated it wasn't like they could do anything to us anyway.

Shit, how weird was that that we weren't going to be here anymore in a few hours? We'd always been together. The four of us: Gerard, Mikey, Me, and Ray. Bob had come later, but he was just as important to all of us. What was it going to be like when we weren't all together anymore? 

Any jobs we got were likely to be spread out over the various districts and it would be almost impossible for us to visit with each other. I didn't even what want to think about what would happen if we I got stuck being one of the Unemployed. 

I wasn't like Gerard and with his art, or Mikey with his ability to run communications rigs without any sort of prior knowledge. I could make explosive experiments in chemistry class that got me de-merits and detentions, but that wasn't exactly the kind of real life skills they were probably looked for. It seemed about as useful as the animal husbandry classes I had also aced. All I wanted was a family of my own. Why did my right to have a wife and kids have to hinge on getting a job?

My original plan had been to become a farmer, they were allowed to large families to help with the farm-work, but that was a pipe-dream. There weren’t a lot of farms left that raised animals, and even if there were I wouldn’t be able to stand working on them. I loved animals, I didn't love killed animals. 

Mikey finally caught up with me in the cafeteria. Stupid bastard had obviously decided to wait until Gerard had finished up his morning rituals, since he was being trailed by a still-groggy Gerard, Ray, and Bob.

"What took you guys so long?" I called.

Ray snorted. "Don't even. We all know that you almost got busted by a rust-bucket and then ran like a little girl."

"I'm not a little girl!"

"Well you’re as short as a little girl," Bob said. Probably just being an ass like usual, like it was all his choice to be some kind of giant.

"There’s no real physical difference between girls and boys anyway. Implying that there is isn't fair to girls."

We all rolled our eyes. Gerard always got so serious about his preconceived notions of gender speeches, and it wasn't like he was actually teaching us anything, since we'd all heard the same rants a thousand times.

"So isn't this protein mush and turnip mash just divine today?" I asked, just to get out of having to listen to the same speech over again.

Mikey snorted at Gerard's annoyed squawk. Gerard only ever drank the Sintho-cafe for breakfast; he always claimed that there were some things that you shouldn't eat in the morning, and turnips were one of them.

"Maybe we should mix some into Gerard's drink," Bob suggested, obviously playing with him. Usually Gerard wouldn't be this easy to rile up and everybody took full advantage. This might be the last breakfast we ever ate together.

Bob at least already knew he wasn't going to be seeing us again for a long time, if ever. He'd already had a job to go to. His family had been techs for as long as any of them cared to remember. As soon as the graduation ceremony was over, he'd be shipped back to the family store. We'd probably never see him again.

I shoved more of the mash into my mouth rather than get involved when Gerard started squawking at Bob for being a Neanderthal. I didn't want to think about what was coming.

At 10 o'clock the light on top of the cafeteria door started blinking red and a low chime issued from the speakers: our sign to leave for the ceremony. Then, just in case we didn't get the memo, the PA system buzzed into action. "All students in their senior year please report to the auditorium. All younger year students are to follow in one half hour."

"Shit!" Ray summed it up for all of us.

"Come on, Gerard. We don't want to be late." Mikey grabbed Gerard's arm and guided him away from the table. This was the second time Gerard had gone through this. 

The first time he'd refused to go to the ceremony unless Mikey went with him. He'd refused to be separated. When the robots had eventually found he was hiding out on the grounds. They had done something to him. Nobody ever found up out what. Mikey might have known but he never said. Either way, the end result was that Gerard was held back a year and put on a tightly controlled schedule, which included pills to make sure that he didn't have any more "episodes," as though not wanting to be separated from his brother was a disease and not something that should have been perfectly normal.

Droids sucked. They had never been programmed to understand human emotions and it showed.

 

We walked into the auditorium together, forming a loose circle around Gerard to make sure he didn't get taken aside by the principal or make a completely pointless run for it. He was practically shaking and wouldn't let go of Mikey's hand, but otherwise he didn't do anything stupid. 

We were some of the first students to make it to the auditorium, probably because the cafeteria was only a few doors down from it. It certainly wasn't because any of us were eager for the ceremony. We took a group of seats one row from the back of the section reserved from of the graduated class. Just like always, 100 kids were leaving the school today. 

Outside, the electric busses that would take us to our new jobs in the city districts pulled up, along with the buses to take us elsewhere if we were unfortunate enough to become Unemployed. Mikey and Gerard clung to each other while Bob sat as silent sentinel on one side, and I squished in on their other side. Ray sat beside me to act as another buffer between the brothers and the rest of the student body.

It was a tense forty-five minutes before the rest of the student body filled into the auditorium. Every seat was taken, but that wasn't what made the whole place feel claustrophobic. It wasn't like it was anything new – last year was the first time a chair had been empty, since before any of us was students. 

There was always the same number in the graduating class. At exactly 11:45 the principal walked up onto the stage. He began his usual speech about how well we had all done our duty to the country by coming to school and completing our education, like we'd ever had a choice,. I didn't pay much attention. This was the 13th time I'd heard the speech. 

Instead, I concentrated on grabbing Mikey's hand and held on tight, until we got to the part of the ceremony when we were called up onto stage to receive our final grades and job assignments. "Iero, Frank was a lot further up the list than either Toro, Ray or the Way brothers.

Still, when I walked across that stage and got the envelope that would decree my future I kept my eye on Mikey and Gerard. They were huddled together in obvious misery. How terrified must they be. All of us were close, but I thought that if they were separated both of them would die. I couldn't really see any other outcome. 

Once I got back to my seat, I grabbed Mikey's hand again and didn't let go. I hoped like hell he and Gerard weren't going to do something stupid if they got assigned to different jobs, or different districts, but I knew that there was no they way they would allow themselves to be separated. Everybody knew it after Gerard proved he would do whatever it took to stay with Mikey. 

"Aren't you going to open it?" Ray whispered into my ear.

"I'll wait until everybody gets their letter."

He shrugged. It wasn’t like I'd have long to wait; the ceremony was always over at exactly 12:30. Mikey and Gerard didn't let go of each other until they had to get up on the stage. When “Way, Gerard” was called they both got up and went to the edge of the stage. Gerard went up first, shaky and way too pale. He had barely stepped off of the stage before Mikey climbed onto it, almost before the Principal could read out “Way, Michael.” Gerard waited in the aisle until Mikey got off the stage. It wasn't how things were normally done, but it wasn't like any of us expected things to be normal when it came to the Ways.

They came back to their seats still clinging to each other. And then we waited as the last half dozen students were called.

It was only after the Principal made his last little speech about doing our best for the betterment of the country and looked forward to our futures that any of us moved to open our envelopes. Around us, the rest of the students were a mix of excited and scared. Some of them had already ripped their envelopes open while others stared at them with obvious distress.

I did my best to ignore them. I already had enough to worry about with my own little group. "On three?"

Gerard nodded but he stared at his envelope like it was going to bite him.

It was Bob who finally gets up the nerve to count, "1...2....3." 

Everybody except Gerard tore into their envelope before Bob even managed to finish saying the three. He just kept turning his envelope around in his hand, but I couldn’t worry about that. Mikey would figure out what was going on. I scanned the piece of paper, not really paying much attention to the grades. I was a B average student, and I knew it. They only classes I'd ever gotten good grades in were music and animal husbandry. Besides, my final job assignment was the only thing that really mattered when it came to my future. There at the bottom of the letter was my job assignment, stamped in bright red ink. "Unemployed." 

Well shit!

# # #

By 1:00 PM they had us all loaded onto busses. Bob had been put on a different bus, headed for his parents’ business, but he'd hugged each of us before he'd gone. I'd been too numb to do more than hug him back as hard as I could. He probably had a good idea of what my assignment was if the sad look he gave he was anything to go by.

It wasn't like it mattered though. Some things couldn't be changed. Job assignments were one of them. I was only 18 and my life was over. How sad was that? At least Gerard, Mikey and Ray had all been assigned to the same district as was. I might never be able to see them, since I was unemployed, but it would make it easier knowing that they were somewhere close. I was going to be so fucking lonely.

As the bus doors snapped shut and the hydraulics lifted it up with a hiss, I felt my stomach twist. This was going to be the first and last time I was ever going to be allowed onto a public transit vehicle. As soon as I stepped off of it, I was going to be stuck in whatever District I got assigned. I'd basically just given up one prison for another.

"Frankie? Are you okay?" Gerard whispered.

"I'm fine," I forced myself to say. It was an obvious lie, but I didn’t want them to know I didn't get a job. Gerard would probably try to do something dramatic, like with last year's graduation ceremony. I didn't want that, particularly since it seemed like wherever he and Mikey had been assigned it was together. At least that's what I assumed since they'd managed to let go of each other enough that they sat on different benches. Gerard was on the same bench as me, and Mikey shared with Ray.

Desperate for some way to distract him so he wouldn't ask any questions about my job, I blurted out, "My stomach’s just upset from the bus, I think I'll go to sleep.” Then I proceeded to lean my head against the cool window glass and close my eyes like I was going to sleep.

There was no way Gerard was actually going to believe I was asleep. I've been told I snore like crazy, but he would still be too nice to keep talking. The way he sighed didn't help with my feelings of guilt.

Surprisingly, I actually did end up falling asleep. I hadn't thought I would be able to with the way that the bus bounced and rattled as it drove down the badly repaired highway that led to the city. I woke up to loud crashes and screaming from outside.

There was a large group of teenagers and young adults dressed up in bright colors, throwing rocks at each other and the bus: so these were the unemployed.

Gerard, Mikey, and Ray had all pressed themselves up against the glass to watch. I would have rather looked at anything else, but the screaming and loud thumps as bricks and rocks bounced against the buses reinforced glass was hard to ignore.

"Damn useless unemployed. Why do they always have to screw things up?" The bus driver grumbled. It was only then that I realized the four of us were the last ones on the bus. Damn, I must have been practically unconscious if I'd managed to sleep though our busses other 21 occupants getting off. 

There was a loud roar. We watched as a large white helicopter flew low enough that the men inside could shoot canisters of gas down into the crowd. The fight broke up quickly after that, as people scattered, stumbling away blindly only to be caught by a group of peace-keepers that had somehow snuck up behind them. 

The bus driver lit up a cigarette and called back to us. "You might as well get back in your seats. We're not going to be going anywhere till they finish rounding up the trouble makers." Then, more quietly, he said, "Damn regs, why I can't just dump the kids and be done with it?"

Gerard shot an annoyed look at the back of the guy’s head. Mikey stepped in before he could actually say anything, though, which was good because I wasn't betting on the guy sticking to the regs and letting us stay inside the bus until the gas cleared if Gerard annoyed him.

As soon as the last Peace-keeper truck pulled away, the bus-driver opened the door and ordered us out. Gerard glared at him as we passed, but none of us bothered to say anything. I was just glad that the rest of them had been assigned jobs close enough that I might actually get to see them. There was only one other reason for them to be dropped off with me, and that was them all being unemployed too. That wasn't likely to happen, though, because they were all brilliant. 

We stood there and watched until the bus pulled out of sight. I couldn’t help thinking that we could really have used Bob, right them. He was always the one that took care of us, and got us moving. Thankfully for all of us Ray was ready to take over his care-giving duties. "Come on, we'd better get to our check-in station. We don't want to be out here if any of those gang members come back."

"Our check-in station?" I asked. Everything that happened seemed to make it more and more likely that they had been assigned to be unemployed too, but I still wasn't ready to accept it. Mikey and Gerard were brilliant, and Ray was as solid as they came, and a perfectionist to boot. They weren't supposed to be unemployed. Not like me.

"Frankie?" Gerard asked. He shook off the light grip Ray had on his arm. "What's wrong?"

"Tell me you’re not unemployed too. Please?" The last word was almost a whine but I didn't want to accept this. They were supposed to have a chance at a better life once we graduated. Their lives weren't supposed to be as screwed up as mine.

Ray let go of Mikey and came over to wrap an arm around my shoulders. "Come on, we'll talk about it once we get to the check-point."

Gerard nodded. I didn’t feel like saying anything so I just went along with them, letting Ray guide me to where we needed to be.

# # #

June 9, 2125: District 8 Check-in Center

# # #

The lady at the front desk was kind of a bitch. Upon seeing us stumble in, she gave a haughty sniff and looked in the back down at her computer screen, like she could catch unemployment or something. 

Thankfully Ray was there, because I was about ready to pop her one. Looking down her nose at Gerard and Mikey when they were so obviously upset was just wrong. Nobody got to look at them like that.

Ray stepped up to the desk. "Ma'am, we were told to check-in here. We're from the Pencey School in District 17.” 

The dragon lady seemed to appreciate Ray’s calm demeanor as much as the rest of us did. She dialed the strength of her death glare down a couple notches. "You'll have three nights to stay in the dorms here. By that point you’re expected to have found a place to live. From then on you'll just come here for your monthly rations credits and the scripts for whatever medication you've been assigned.”

"Medication?" Gerard asked.

"Yes, two of you been put on medical rations so all necessary medication will be provided.”

I felt something in my stomach unclench after hearing that. The pills were a god-send for Mikey. He wasn't going to get better but severe bi-polar disorder could be handled with the medication. In Gerard’s case we wouldn’t need the medication for long; but the first set of pills would let us wean him off the medication slowly, which would help to avoid any major side-effects.

Ray stepped in before any of the rest of us could say something stupid. "Thank you, ma'am. Who do we need to discuss living arrangements with?" Ray said. 

Gerard came up behind me and grabbed my hand. "I can smell cafeteria food, let's see if we can get some. They have to be open by now, right?"

"Yea, let's go check."

"Mikey? Are you going to be okay?" Gerard called.

Mikey waved him off from his position catty-corner to the desk. I was betting from the way he squinted through his glasses that he could see dragon-lady's screen from there. No way were we going to drag him away now.

"We'll be getting food," I called to Ray and ignored the way the lady glared at me. So what if we were being loud? It wasn't like we were good respectable people now that we'd gotten stuck being unemployed.

The cafeteria was remarkably reassuring. It looked almost identical to the one back at school, right down the red light over the door to announce when it was closed down. They were even serving the same turnip mush and Sintho-cafe as school.

"At least some things never change," Gerard said and sat down with the largest cup of Sintho-cafe he could order.

I snorted at him since my mouth was too full to make any sort of understandable language.

I was on my second bowl of mash and Gerard was on his third cup of chicory, when Mikey and Ray arrived. 

Ray collapsed onto the bench beside me, his back to the table. "Well it looks like we’re going to have to go out and make our own arrangements for housing, they’ll provide a list of possible locations but we haven’t picked by the time our three days are up we’re screwed. We’ll have to figure out a way to get clothes too, apparently it's illegal to go around the city in our school uniforms.”

"Great, just what we needed to make life better, shopping." Not that I really cared. It wasn’t like I’d been shopping since before I went to school, because shopping at the school’s little commissary hardly counted.

"You never know, it might be fun," Mikey said, doing his best to reassure me because he just had to be nice when I was in a pissy mood. "I hear they let you pick bright colors when you’re unemployed. Those gang members were certainly wearing bright enough clothing."

I said I refused to be appeased, like I was some toddler who was going to get distracted just because they were letting us have brightly colored clothing.

"I also picked up our food rations; we're also allowed to eat here whenever we want to." Ray gave a dirty look to my bowl of mash. "Though I'm not sure how often we want to."

"What? It's not that bad.” I made a grab for his mush, which he dodged without much trouble. Sometimes it sucked to have people know me so well. “You're just not a big fan of turnips."

"Amen to that,” Ray agreed. He ducked around the table to sit next to Gerard, so I wouldn’t have a chance to make another grab for his meal. “Anyway, about the ‘scripts, you aren’t required to take them, but if you're caught disturbing the peace and don’t have any medication in your bloodstreams, you'll be considered incapable of taking care of our health needs."

"And?" I asked, because that sounded ominous as fuck.

"And they have the right to send us to an institutionalized health facility until they believe we are properly medicated and won't go off the ‘scripts again."

"Well, shit."

"Yeah,” Mikey agreed. 

"I'm fine. I've been better lately. It’s not like I really have a problem," Gerard insisted and poked morosely at his mash.

I shared a look with Ray. He had been better lately, not pulled any crazy stunt and it had been month since he had a day where not even Bob could drag him out of bed, but at the same time he'd been medicated for the last year.

"We'll just have to see," Ray said.

Gerard went back to nursing his sintho-cafe and sulking.

I decided to change the subject before he ended up having an all-out tantrum. That would be just what we needed, to get taken in for caused a ruckus before we even left the check-out building, and I wouldn’t put it past the dragon -lady to call the peace-keepers herself. She seemed like the type who would do something like that just to get us out of her hair.

We spent the night in the dorms. Nobody wanted to brave the city during the night. It was still too strange and dangerous seeming. We were comforted by the familiarity. If I hadn't known what had happened that day I could have easily imagined that we were still in our dorms back at the school.

They were the same dull gray as everything had been at the school, with the same rough wool blankets on the bed and the same scratchy sheets. 

It was like my first night at school all those years ago.

I turned over and pulled my blanket over my head, trying to ignore the way that I could hear Gerard whispering to himself as Ray tapped a beat out against his headboard. All the little signs of fear and nerves you learned to recognize after years and years of lived with somebody.

I finally fell asleep to Gerard’s singing, but my nerves didn't let me get much sleep. I kept waking up whenever one of the others moved, or to the sound of boomed music and yells coming from the barred window on the far side of the room.

# # #

June 10, 2125: District 8 Check-in Center

# # #

The next morning Ray dragged us out of bed. It should have been Mikey's turn to wake Gerard up, but it didn't end up mattering. Gerard was awake and sat on his bed, fully dressed by the time I woke up. It was frankly a little freaky and probably meant that he was going to start in on one of his bouts of insomnia, the type that would lead to one of his more serious episodes.

I'd have to talk to Ray about got his script filled soon, Mikey would have brought his spare set of pills with him, but I doubted Gerard would have remembered. He was always looking for an excuse to 'forget' to take them.

"Get dressed, we'll be in the cafeteria." Ray told me. The nervous look he sent Gerard's way made me feel better. Maybe I wouldn't have to talk to him after all.

After they trooped out, I got dressed. It wasn't like I was body shy or anything, I just didn't like changing in front of everybody else. I'd mastered the art of changed my clothes under the blankets year before, but this was easier. I managed to get dressed in only a couple of minutes.

I made it to the cafeteria just in time to walk into an epic Way brothers fight. "You’re taking the pill, Gerard. Don't think I didn't notice that you didn't take your evening dose. There's no reason to horde them if we're going to be able to refill our scripts."

"That's not the point. I don't need them anymore. We're not in school anymore. Who the fuck cares if I cause a ruckus now?"

"Gerard!" 

I could just tell Mikey was going to go for his usual logic-based argument, which would have pretty much no affect on Gerard when he was in one of his moods. It wasn’t like Gerard even remembered getting sick the last time he stopped taking his pills without taking the proper precautions.

Thankfully Mikey had me around for times like these. "Well I'm pretty sure that the dragon lady who's watched the front desk was just looked for an excuse to call the Peace Keepers on us. I swear she's out to get me. I mean really, like I have a problem with over-activity?"

"Please, I remember the time you managed to glue Professor Martin's butt to his chair."

"That was a complete accident."

"Sure it was, Frankie. The glue just jumped out of your hand and landed on the Prof's seat."

"It did!" I wailed in my best insulted tone, though I made sure to keep quiet enough not to disturb the lady up front. It wasn't like the robots working the food line were going to care.

"Do you really think she's out to get you?" Gerard asked doubtfully. 

I pushed my paranoid delusion shtick to the limit. "Didn't you see the way she was glared at me? I swear she tried to glare holes into my skull!"

"Fine, I'll take the pills, but only until we're not staying here anymore. It's only three more days right?" He was supposed to take the pill with food but by this point all of us knew better than to comment when all he did was drink another cup of sintho-cafe. 

"On that note, I think we should spend the day looked for housing. The sooner we get out of here, the less likely Frank will have a chance to cause any trouble." Ray said.

"Me!" I squawked, played along.

"Yes you. Anyway, I talked the lady at the front desk into setting us up with a couple of possibilities. Had to register us as a entertainment group, since they were just planning to cram us into whichever bachelor units they had open in the city, and I was pretty sure that everybody wanted to stay together."

"Definitely." Things were bad enough without contemplating the possibility of navigating the city on my own.

"They let you register us as an entertainment group?" Leave it to Mikey to get bogged down in the logistics.

"We have to get a license to perform on public property but yeah, they were willed to make arrangements. Apparently unemployed performers can supplement their rations by entertaining the working population. Or so the Lady claimed, though she did make it sound like we'd have to be stupid to try it."

"Well it's not like we're actually going to become an entertainment group. If registering as one lets us stay together I'm all for it," Gerard said.

That shut down whatever argument Ray and Mikey had been geared up for. Mikey would do whatever he thought was best for Gerard. It was just the way he was.

After we finished breakfast we headed out to start looked at the housing options. After peeking over Ray's shoulder and catching a¬ glimpse of the complicated twists and turns that made up the paper map, I made sure that Mikey was between us. I didn't want to have to figure out where the heck we were in the city. I'd always been known for my ability to get lost in the school, and it wasn't usually as intentional as I liked to pretend.

The dragon lady was sitting behind the reception desk, just like she was the night before. If I didn't know better I would have thought she was a robot just like the ones that ran the cafeteria.

"Wait!" she called just as we were about to get out the door. Well shit, I tried my best to think of anything we might have done wrong but nothing came to mind. Gerard had taken his pills and I assumed Mikey had taken his, and we hadn't left a mess in the dorm room. Even if we had, it wasn't like we wouldn't be back in a few hours anyway.

She bustled out from behind the desk and grabbed the map out of Ray's hands. He made an aborted grab for it but remembered just in time that he wasn't supposed to cause any trouble. She pulled a red pen out of her sloppy bun and used it to make a bright red X on the map. Then she handed the map, and some sort of plastic pass to Ray. "You only get one of those so don't lose it, and don't trade it for anything. You go directly to the clothes providers and you show them that pass. They'll let you pick out a few sets of clothes. After this, you'll have to use your rations or scrounge for whatever clothes you wear, so you better behave. If they toss you out with only the clothes on your backs, you won't get a second chance.”

"Yes ma'am," Ray said. Besides Bob, he had always been the best at kissing up to the teachers. In this case though, I fully approved. She might be being a bitch about it, but if she hadn't explained I wouldn't have known that we were supposed to get enough clothes to last us through the next few months, or years. At the school whenever one of our uniforms got worn out or we outgrew them, they were replaced. No questions asked.

I'd just assumed it was the same way here. I made sure to smile at her as I passed. I still didn’t like her, but I could kind of see why she'd gotten this job. 

# # #

Ray proved to be better at following the map then I expected. We only took two wrong turns on our way to pick up clothes. After all of the fuss the lady at the check-in station had made about us going to get clothes first, I'd been expected to get stopped by peace-keepers, or maybe some concerned citizens, but the city was creepily silent. Sometimes I felt like I could feel eyes on my back, but I never saw anybody. Not even other unemployed.

The others were nervous too. We ran into each other more than once, since we walked barely a step apart and everyone looked anywhere but at what was in front of us. I definitely wasn't the only one who looked at the abandoned store fronts and houses warily. 

Ray practically fell into the clothing assignment building when we got there. I expected somebody to make a snide remark, but the only ones in the building were house-keeping robots. 

"Show your pass." The robot nearest to us buzzed.

Ray held out the pass that we'd been given. She scanned in before depositing it in a disposal bin beneath the counter. "You may pick your clothes now." No comment on the limits of what we were allowed to pick or anything. We all just stared at her in shock. This wasn't anything like going to the school's bots for a fitting. How the hell were we supposed to know what we were supposed to wear?

Mikey was the one to voice the question though. "Which clothes are we allowed to choose from?"

"All clothes are here for your use."

Well that was less than helpful. "I guess we just pick, they'll probably tell us if we do something we shouldn't." The housekeeper bots at home had always told us when we broke the rules.

We headed over to the racks of clothes, keeping an eye on the rust-buckets just in case they suddenly changed their minds, but they didn't move. Not even when we really got into it and dug through the various bins looked for clothes to fit us. There were so many colors; it was hard to decide what to pick. We were all used to wearing blue blazers, khaki pants, and striped ties day in and day out.

By the end we’d made a huge mess, but I had to admit Ray had been right. It was kind of fun to have so many different choices.

# # #

We stopped back at the dorms to drop off our new clothes, before headed out to investigate the housed situation.

Somehow, walking in the city felt even creepier when we were in our new clothes then when we’d been in uniform. Maybe it was because we were more obvious. With our bright clothes we might as well have worn signs that announced: “New Unemployed; Please Attack!!!” Then again, I may have just been being paranoid. After all the only experience I had with unemployed, present company excluded, was the gang from yesterday.

Still, unnecessary paranoid or not, I wasn’t about to be separated from the others. Just to make sure that we didn't get separated I kept one hand around Mikey's belt and the other in on the hood of Gerard's jacket. Ray I could trust not to get distracted and wander off on me. He at least knew to check behind him every few minutes.

At least he should know to do that. He'd had enough experience trying to wrangle me and the Way brothers on school trips. I really missed Bob. If he'd been with us I knew he'd have been able to keep track of Gerard while I kept an eye on Mikey.

"Are we there yet?" I whined trying to break up the nervous tension that just kept building. Why did I keep feeling eyes on the back of my neck? It made me freaking insane.

"I think so. The house should be a couple blocks from here."

"That's really reassuring, Ray." 

He turned to glare at me, walking backwards with a skill I envied. "If you want to be in charge of the map, Frankie..." He trailed off.

"Don't you dare, Ray. I still remember that school trip when we were supposed to be gathering flora for the Earth Science teacher and managed to circle the park twice,” Mikey spoke up. 

"Hey we got the plants we needed didn't we!" I said.

"We also ended up in detention for a solid week because we were so late got back that they almost called the Peace-keepers on us," Gerard chimed in.

That was unfortunately true, which meant I couldn’t really defend myself. "Still, I don't know if Ray should be directing."

"It's him or Mikey, Frank."

"Fine."

Mikey didn't even have the grace to act like my silence surprised him. With Mikey we'd get there, but probably not until after he'd explored every alley way and shop on the way, just to drive me crazy. 

"You all are so mean to me."

"Sure we are Frankie. Like you don't give back as good as you get." Ray turned back to his map and left me with no choice to grumble under my breath, since I wasn't going to get any sympathy from the others.

"Stupid Ray and his stupid map."

I was so busy grumbling to myself that I didn't notice when Mikey and Gerard stopped, and ran smack into their backs, almost knocking them off their feet.

"Really Frank? Are you trying to give Gerard another concussion?" Ray asked.

"It was an accident," I snapped, annoyed that he'd bring that up again. I obviously hadn't meant to give Gerard a concussion. It wasn't like I'd asked to be born clumsy.

"It's not like it really matters. Once you've sorted out yourself out, we'll need to head on to the next building."

"What!" We'd just gotten here – why in the world would we be moving on so soon? Then I got my first good look at the building we'd stopped in front of. The roof was caved in, and the porch was sagging. Only a couple windows had glass left, and most of those windows didn't have any sort of grate to keep someone else from busting through. "Well shit. That's not going to work."

"No kidding. If they're all this bad it's no wonder that these places have been abandoned."

"Yeah," Mikey breathed out, but he still stared at the building with something like confusion.

Who knew why? Except for the brightly colored graffiti on the side of the building it was the same gray, cinderblock construction building that was made of the same dull gray building materials as pretty much every other building in the area, a mixture of sand and cement. It was cheap and there was an almost endless supply of the stuff.

“We should get out of here,” he whispered and we were all too nervous to argue.

The second and third buildings we saw were equally run down. But we hit the jackpot on the forth. It was further from of the city center than any of the other buildings, but it was an old, slightly run down two-story house. It was much more of a home than I had been expecting to find.

“It’s kind of creepy though, isn’t it?” Mikey asked, poking at the afghan that was still hung over the back of the house’s dusty sofa. “Like the person who lived here just up and walked away on day and nobody ever came back.”

“I’d say that’s a pretty good description,” Ray called from the kitchen. “The cupboard is still full of protein powder and I think the turnips sprouted.” 

After a few more thumps, he continued, “At least somebody cleared out the refrigerator. That would have been nasty.” 

“Guys, you have to come see this!” Gerard called from the basement. Mikey headed for the door that led to the bottom floor immediately, while I waited for Ray. Not because I was scared or anything. It was just that I might have to defend Ray from spiders or something.

Thankfully, while dark and dusty, the stairwell was spider-free. Even before we reached the bottom I could already guess what had drawn Gerard’s attention. There were paintings everywhere. Bright and bold, like something you’d have seen in the early 21st century back before the light was sucked out of everything.

We found Gerard and Mikey standing in front of a large desk filled with paints and brushes and all kinds of painted supplies. “Can we pick this house?” Gerard asked, his voice soft and reverent. “It’s amazing.”

Mikey clasped his hand before turned his pleaded gaze on Ray and me. Ray folded first. “Well we should have a quick look at the roof, but I don’t see why we can’t stay here. I doubt we’ll find anything better in the next two days.”

“That’s good,” Gerard said, already digging through the paints.

“I’ll stay here with him if you two want to head back to the check-in station and see about got everything arranged.”

I didn’t like the idea of leaving them alone at all, but this was the most involved I’d seen Gerard since they’d put him on the pills. It made me nervous. It was good that he was doing better, but it wouldn’t last. 

“Fine, but you two have to lock the door after us.”

Mikey rolled his eyes, looked suitably annoyed even though I could practically feel him let out a sigh of relief. “We’re not kids Frank. I’m pretty sure we know not to talk to strangers.”

“Well if you’re sure.” I replied in my best ‘dorm mother’ voice. 

It still made Mikey laugh and even Gerard managed a smile.

# # #

It was even quieter and creepier on our way back through the city. With just the two of us, there wasn’t safety in numbers. Ray and I walked shoulder to shoulder did our best to keep an eye on all of the surrounded buildings anyway.

We didn’t dare talk until we were safely inside our temporary dorm room, filling out residency paperwork. Even then we didn’t say much. We didn’t need anybody overhearing this conversation.

Ray carefully signed his name and citizen’s number to yet another sheet of the contract. “You know he’s going to get worse right? Your remember what happened the last time he went off the pills cold turkey.”

There was pretty much no way that I was ever going to forget. We’d both been thinking about it since that morning. We’d all covered for him the first time he’d quit taking the pills, sure that he’d get better. None of us had considered the side-effects of withdrawal. He’d gotten better almost immediately that time too. Then within a week he’d barely been able to make it through class before he fell asleep. Not waking up again until we dragged him out of bed the next morning. We’d had to admit what was going on after we left him alone and all went to dinner one night, only to come back and find him passed out in a puddle of puke after he tried to take all his pills at once. “Hopefully between the three of us we’ll find a way to manage. Besides if we can convince him to go off the pills slowly he’ll be fine.”

“You know that’s not going to happen. He doesn’t really remember what happened last time. He’s not going to listen to us.” He turned to another page of the contract, still not looking at me.

“I know, but it’s not like there’s anything we can do besides hope.”

# # #

June 12, 2125: The House

# # #

Move-in day was two days later. It wasn't like it was a big deal though. We only had the clothes we'd gotten on that first day and the few personal effects we'd managed to bring with us from school. It barely totaled a bag a piece. 

Still, the move was symbolic. This would be the first time since we were little kids that we hadn't been in a government institution. It wasn't like we could buy ourselves a house-warming present, but Ray and I planned to go to the nearest grocery store that took ration credits to see if we could get a treat of some kind to commemorate the experience.

Maybe some alcohol if they had it, but that seemed like a little much to ask for. Even back at the school it had been hard to get anything alcoholic that wasn't made out of turnips. And turnip rot gut was strong enough to make anybody drunk after a couple of swigs, but it wasn't anything you'd drink if you had any other options.

"Do you think the lady who lived here knew what was going to happen to her house?" Gee asked me when I walked into the house. I hadn't even made it into the entry way this time before he started asked me questions. It was more worrying than I liked. "Where is Mikey?"

"Oh, he's downstairs. He wanted to clean up the art studio and make sure we don't need to go scrounging for supplies,” he said, and then went right back to his original questions. “So, do you think she knew? I think so. It feels like she wanted someone to love this house as much as she did."

"I'm glad, Gerard." I exchanged a look with Ray. His hair was standing on end, so at least I least he was as worried as I was. "Gerard, I'm going to go see if Mikey needs any help. Can you help Ray put our clothes away?"

"Sure thing. Mikey's already picked the bedroom he wants and you two can pick from the others."

"Where are you going to be staying?" Ray asked.

"Oh, I'm planning to stay downstairs." 

I didn't stay to hear the rest of the conversation. I didn't want to know what Gerard's plans were. The idea of him holed up in the basement where we couldn't look after him was worrying enough.

I found Mikey exactly where Gerard had said he'd be, though it looked less like he was checking for missed art supplies and more like he was removing anything that Gerard could use to hurt himself. 

"He’s getting worse again, isn't he?" I asked. “I figured if we could get him out of the school and off the meds he’d get better, but…”

"He’s not depressed. Once things settle down he’ll be fine"

"He seemed happy yesterday, happier than I'd seen him in a long time, but it seems like he's gotten more manic today." 

Mikey nodded.

"Is he still refused to let us wean him off the pills slowly?"

Mikey nodded again and pulled a paint-encrusted pallet knife out of a drawer. 

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"No, he has to do this himself. He won't take the pills unless we force him to and even then he'll probably do something stupid like throw them up just to because he doesn't think he needs them."

"So what are you planning to do?

"Wait and see what happens. Maybe it won't be as bad as last time."

Too bad neither of us believed that.

# # #

It ended up being me and Mikey that went on the grocery run. He needed to get out of the house even if he didn't want to leave Gerard alone, and Ray was okay with staying with Gerard. At least he was once he caught sight of the deep shadows under Mikey’s eyes. 

The grocery was only a few blocks away from the house, so we didn't need the map. That was good because I wouldn't have managed to use it right, and Mikey looked too tired to deal with anything that took that much attention.

It was a little store that held barely anything but different flavored protein mixes and some droopy looking produce. There was a tiny meat counter, but I wasn’t convinced anything there was actually meat. 

It didn’t matter anyway. I wasn’t going to start eating animal products just because we weren’t in school anymore. If the others wanted to, they could do their own cooking. “So what are you thinking, Mikey, beef-flavor protein or mushroom-flavor?”

He shrugged and hunched further into himself. 

“Well we can always use both.” I moved on to the produce, decided on a nice looking batch of radishes and grabbed up a few apples as well. They would take up more credits than turnips but Mikey looked like he needed a treat.

Not that he noticed I was getting them. He was too hunched in on himself to notice anything that was further away from the floor than our shoes.

“You can talk to me if it gets to be too much. We’re family now. Not just dorm-mates.”

That at least got him to look at me for a second before he returned to staring at our shoes. “Are we really?” 

“Well, we got a house together and are planned to live together for the foreseeable future. I’m pretty sure that makes us family.” It wasn’t like I had much experience with the whole concept. Mikey, Gerard, and Bob were the only kids I’d ever known who still had some connection to their biological family. I had happy memories of my mom. Wanting to cook for my kids, like she’d cooked for me, was what inspired me to take cooking classes in school, but cooking wasn’t a real connection. At least not one that would make up for the fact we hadn’t seen each other since I was five.

“It isn’t anything you’re going to be able to help with. He’s going to have to hit rock bottom on his own.”

Besides the radishes and apples, everything else in the produce section looked pretty sad, so I headed for the small shelf in the back that held bottles that looks suspiciously like liquor. 

“Probably, but we can at least make sure that you don’t have to hit rock bottom with him,” I said. True to my suspicions, the alcohol was all way above our price range and way too high quality for our needs. “Just promise me you’ll think about it okay?”

# # #

June 18, 2125: The House

# # #

Gerard was well on his way to detoxing after a week of living in the house; unfortunately that didn’t mean there was any guarantee he’d survive the experience. He’d spent the first five days rearranging everything in the basement how he wanted it. Then he spent the following two days barely getting out of bed. I didn’t even know if he’d eaten or drunk anything besides sintho-café despite my attempts to stake out the kitchen.

Since there wasn’t anything we could do for Gerard until he finally broke down and agreed to take his pills, Ray decided we needed to be distracted. He put Mikey and me to work, cleaning out the whole house, getting rid of the rotten turnips and adding our supplies to those that we’d managed to salvage from the cupboard.

It was actually kind of boring with nothing to do but scrub, dust, or sweep. The dragon-lady had talked to us about scrounging from the refuse piles at the local stores, but there wasn’t much that we needed when it came to our basic needs. The house was fully equipped with furniture – sofas, mattresses, it was all present and accounted for even if it wasn’t in the best condition.

And I was pretty sure that whatever mattresses we managed to find in a refuse pile would be in worse or equally bad condition. We could try to find better furniture but it wasn’t worth fighting other unemployed over.

What we really needed was something to keep us from going insane from boredom. At school we’d had classes and projects to keep us busy. Now there was just a great big nothing. There were only a certain number of times you could scrub a kitchen before it began to feel pointless.

If we’d been allowed to have access to radios or readers we might have stood a chance of staving off boredom, but as it was there was nothing to do but sit around and stare at each other.

“I’m thinking about trying to start a garden in the back yard,” Ray announced about a month after we’d moved in.

“Do you even know how to grow anything?” Hell, I wasn’t even sure if the tiny plot of land that was choked with vines and weeds was something we could salvage.

“It’s not like we have anything to lose, and maybe if you didn’t have to use rations credits on produce we’d actually be able to afford some alcohol for once,” Ray snapped.

“Look, whatever, if you want to do the cooking you can go right ahead. It’s not like I fucking care.” I stomped out to the front porch just to get away from him. I knew he didn’t really mean anything by it; he’d used the same joke since the first time I’d come back from the store with apples instead of beer, but I wasn’t in the mood for it. Gerard had kept me up most of the night with his pacing. I was pretty sure he’d kept Mikey awake too since he hadn’t come out of his room yet and it was almost lunch time.

This was not what I’d planned for my life, when I was back at school. It wasn’t all bad, but I still dreamed about being employed. Having access to a computer, not having to barter and haggle for every bit of food we got. 

I guess it was true what our teachers had always said: you knew you were grown up when you cared more about putting food on the table then about what kind of food you had.

When I’d finally calmed down enough to go back inside I found Ray happily extolling the virtues of fresh grown food to Mikey. Even if I still thought the idea was a pipe dream it was good to see Mikey looking at least a little excited about something. He’d gotten so thin and wan that it was hard to look at him. I’d have thought he was trying stay up all night to keep an eye on Gerard if I hadn’t caught him sneaking out of the house more than once. He was always back in the house by the time Ray and Gerard were up so I didn’t even know if Ray knew he was sneaking out. I’d have told him to stop going and get some sleep instead, except he wasn’t the type to do something he didn’t think was important. If he was sneaking off at night to spend time with the other unemployed he had to have a reason to do so.

“Since you two are so big on the idea of playing around in the dirt why don’t you go see if you can scrounge up some seeds,” I said.

“Ger…” Mikey started to protest but I wasn’t having any of it.

“I’ll stay with him. You look like you could use some sun anyway,” I said, and wasn’t that a huge understatement? If he got any paler you’d be able to see his veins through his skin. It was bad enough that Gerard was turning into a virtual vampire, refusing to leave his bed, much less the basement, for days on end.

Ray slung an arm around his shoulder. “Come on let’s get out of here, before he puts us to work scrubbing the kitchen again." 

# # #

July 9, 2125: Food Market near border of District 8

# # #

After another day of staring at the wallpaper and trying not to go stir crazy, I headed for the market. It had been a month since we’d been assigned to the District and there were still two days before we could pick up our next batch of ration credits. There wasn't much that I could get with the limited credits we had left to feed us for the month, but I figured I might be able to scrounge for something to celebrate the anniversary of our graduation with, so I started scrounging among the garbage cans back behind the store. They didn't usually have anything truly filling since it was almost impossible for protein powders to expire. Vitamins and supplements weren't the type of thing that you usually wanted to risk taking after they'd expired.

But I was hoping that I might be able to find some half rotten turnips or maybe even some radishes or kale, something that would liven up our usual bland dinners of protein. Ray’s ongoing efforts to turn our little plot of land into a garden had yet to succeed. What few plants had managed to grow were quickly stolen by the crows and rats. They seemed to be the only animals who managed to survive in the city, where all but the most-hardy greenery had been stripped away. These days it was a miracle to even see a dandelion managing to survive in some forgotten crack in the sidewalk.

I was head-first in a garbage can when I heard a rustle. I froze, back tense, the edge of the can cutting into my belly. I was alone; something I usually didn't risk when I was scrounging. Not after Ray had nearly gotten himself gutted over an old set of records. Mikey was thankfully a vicious fighter, and had managed to chase them off before anything really serious had happened. Otherwise we’d have been in a hell of a lot of trouble. As unemployed we didn’t qualify for medical insurance beyond the required prescriptions.

I pulled myself upright, slowly enough that whoever was behind me wouldn't think I was doing anything stupid like reaching for a weapon. I didn’t want to have to patch myself up if I got stabbed over a misunderstanding.

It didn't end up mattering; by the time I was fully upright and had turned around to face the mouth of the alley, there was nobody in sight.

A stray cat maybe? The sound had been louder than I'd expect from an animal though. Since I wasn't being threatened with dismemberment if I acted threatening, I grabbed a piece of an old broken food crate that had been left out in the alley long enough to rot part way through. 

Not the best weapon but it would have to do. I inched towards the mouth of the alley, looking around every box and can, waiting for something to jump out at me.

No pissed off alley cats or territorial dogs – the alley was completely quiet. Maybe I'd imagined the whole thing?

I turned back to the garbage cans to get back to scrounging. That was when I saw it: a little lump of brightly colored fabrics layer and a fluffy mop of curls. 

I couldn't tell if they belonged to a boy or a girl. It didn't really matter though, the kid was WAY too tiny to be hiding out in a back alley.

I dropped down into a less threatening crouch, making sure that I didn't completely block the exit. I didn't want to give the kid a panic attack. "Hi! I'm Frank. What's your name?" 

A pair of eyes peeked out over their rainbow legging covered knees. They were big and brown and way too sad.

I waited a minute or two hoping that they'd say something, even if they wouldn't tell me their name, but they just kept staring at me. 

Reminded of the old stray cats that used to hide in the schools back garden, I backed away slowly. Some of the tension went out of their little body.

Stifling a sigh, I reached into my bag and grabbed a few single sized packs of protein powder I'd just bought from the market and one of the limp bunches of turnip greens I'd rescued from the garbage, putting it all down between us. Then I backed away further.

We stared at each other for a few minutes longer, before I was distracted by a scuffing sound. By the time I looked back around the food was gone, probably hidden somewhere under the kid's patchwork sweater.

"I'm going to have to head back to my house now. It was nice meeting you," I said, grabbing my bags of groceries and standing up. I'd prefer to take the kid with me and make sure they were properly fed but I'd learned my lesson after the second time I'd snuck a cat into school. If it wasn't the cat's idea to come inside then they'd just sneak right back out as soon as your back was turned. "I hope to run into you again soon."

I left the alley and hid myself in another alleyway across the street until I saw the kid scurry out, a lump under their sweater. They headed in the opposite direction as I was heading.

I bit back my immediate instinct to follow.

Hopefully I'd see the kid again; but I doubted that would happen if I scared them off by being a creepy stalker.

# # #

Despite the fact that I'd only managed to get a few rotten turnips and a two bunches of turnip greens, one of which I'd give to the kid, we still had an anniversary dinner. It wasn’t like we had any other reasons to celebrate. 

Even Gerard showed up to dinner that night. I hadn't seen him come up for a meal in three days and there had only been two protein packs missing from the pantry. He had to be starving by that point.

Mikey sat next to him, a wall on the other side. Gerard still looked haunted, his eyes darting around to the table between the bites of food he shoveled into his mouth. At the rate he was eating he'd be back down into the basement before I was even halfway through.

Desperate for something to catch his interest or at least get him to consider staying out of the basement for a little while longer, I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I ran into a kid today while I was scrounging out behind the food market!"

"You went scrounging by yourself? Are you crazy?" Ray was so pissed off his hair was doing that 'standing on end' thing it did. 

Mikey didn't look much happier, though all he did was scowl at me over his glasses. He wasn't much for showing emotions.

"Oh come on, Ray. It was just behind the market. It wasn't even like I was doing any real scrounging or anything. Who's going to care about a couple of half-rotten vegetables anyway?"

My argument was less than convincing if Ray was anything to go by, leaning further into my personal space and his hair growing exponentially bigger.

"Ray!" I squeaked, in a totally masculine way. 

"Well obviously the trash heap behind the market is more interesting than you thought it was if you ran into somebody there. What would have happened if it had been a gang instead of some kid?"

I could still remember my terror when I thought I was about to be maimed over a bunch of rotten vegetables, but that wasn't the point. I was totally capable of taking care of myself. "It was just a kid!"

"And what if it hadn't been just a kid? If you'd been killed we might never have known what happened to you. Promise me that you'll take someone with you next time you go scrounging."

I slammed my fork and knife down on the plate. "No way!" There was no way the kid was going to come out again if I had somebody like Ray or Mikey following me around.

"This isn't negotiable, Frankie."

"The hell it isn't." I grabbed my plate and made for the kitchen.

# # #

July 12, 2125: The House

# # #

I didn't end up doing anything about my resolve to see the kid again until later in the week. I hadn’t had a good excuse for going back to check on them, until after we had our new ration credits. As long as Ray didn’t realize that I was planning to do more than shop I’d be able to check on the kid without being caught

I left earlier that I usually would, just to be extra sure Ray didn’t know what I was up to. It was only about an hour after the sun came up. The more rowdy unemployed usually sacked out for a couple hours after partying all night. I only made it half way to the store before I realized I hadn't been as successful at sneaking out as I thought I had been.

Just to be a brat, I snuck into an alley and waited for Ray or Mikey to come by. It was Mikey, all sulky and miserable looking with his glasses half way down his nose and looking more asleep than awake. 

I grinned evilly to myself. He totally deserved a rude wakeup call after following me. Letting out a battle cry I leapt onto his back. "Good morning Mikey Way!"

He jumped about a foot in the air but didn't toss me off.  
"You stink!"

I slithered down to the ground. "Oh come on. I didn't scare you that bad."

"Hmph."

"Like it's going to hurt you to wake up early for one day."

He glared at me out of the corner of his eye. "You could have just waited and taken Ray with you."

"Shut up." I shoved him.

An Employed came out of one of the apartment buildings we passed. When she saw us, in our bright colored clothes, she gripped her purse tightly and ran the other way.

Mikey and I shared an amused look. He rolled his eyes. "You're such a brat."

As expected, the kid didn’t show up that morning. At least we found a limp bunch of carrots and some turnip greens, so it wasn't a complete wash. Mikey acted like he didn't notice when I hid some protein under a trash kid lid just in case the kid did come back.

# # #

The next time I went the store it was Ray that went with me. We actually went inside that time, since we had our ration credits again. I budgeted even more tightly than I had been before, managing enough extra food between the four of our credits to feed one more small person.

I think that Ray thought I was crazy by that point. He certainly thought I was obsessed, but it just didn't seem fair. We were stuck in this shit hole of a situation throwing our lives away just like all the other unemployed but at least we’d gotten a chance to go to school, have friends, be kids. This poor kid had most likely been on the streets their whole life.

# # #

July 31, 2125: Food Market near border of District 8

# # #

"I don't want to be here." Gerard said. He hadn't agreed to come to the store with me by choice. I didn't want to know what Mikey had threatened him with to get him to leave the basement.

Arguments between the Way brothers tended to turn vicious in the way only fights between people who trusted each other to never leave could be. "Well I didn't ask you to come with me so at least we're in the same boat."

Gerard hunched further into himself instead of replying.

I watched him out for the corner of my eye. In the sunlight it was even more obvious how thin and pale he'd become over his last few months hiding in the basement. Hopefully, getting out in the sunlight would be as good for him as Mikey seemed to think it would be.

"If you guys would just let me go scrounging on my own, you wouldn't have to come with me." I kicked a pebble out of my way. The cement in this area was cracked and broken. It made a good excuse not to look at Gerard.

"We don't want you to get hurt."

"I've never run into a single gang while I've been scrounging at the store." Besides if Ray and Mikey were fine with me taking Gerard with me they had to be convinced there wasn't any danger. If we got caught by the Peace-keepers it would only take a simple blood test to prove that he wasn't taking his pills. 

Then it would all be over. They'd take him away and Mikey would go crazy, do something reckless and get himself caught by the Peace-keepers on the off chance that he would be reunited with Gerard.

Times like that I just wanted to scream at Gerard. Tell him how selfish he was being risking Mikey like he was. I was thankful when we reached the alleyway. It was still strewn with garbage and broken food crates, but I was used to it. 

Gerard, bless his heart, didn't really care about getting messy but he also wouldn't know an edible vegetable if it bit him. I left him poking the bits and pieces of rubble while I made a perfunctory search of the garbage cans.

It was a surprisingly good day. Someone had thrown out a couple sets of turnips. Vegetables, greens and all, just because some of them had gotten bird pecked. There was also a small bag of apples. Green and unripe, but I could wait until they were edible.

Eager to show off my spoils, I headed back to where I'd left Gerard near the mouth of the alley. He was crouched down, half-way hidden by a pile of crates. "It was a good haul today!" I called.

He didn't acknowledge me. Not that I was expecting him to or anything, but it was still rude. Then I got close enough to see what he was up to. The kid had been hiding behind the crates. She didn't look as frightened this time, in fact she was staring at Gerard in the same star-struck manner I recognized from back when I'd first met him all those years ago at school.

Gerard turned to me with a brighter smile than he'd had in months. He looked almost as star-struck as the kid. "Her name is Grace, she can live with us right?"

Logically I should have said no. Ray would kill us for being reckless, but I didn't want to leave her here anymore than Gerard did. Mikey would side with us as soon as he saw how exited Gerard was, so it wasn't like Ray would actually be able to do anything. "Why not?"

# # #

Ray, as expected, was the voice of reason. "What the hell were the two of you thinking? You were supposed to go out and scrounge for food, not bring home a kid. Do either of you even know anything about how to take care of a kid?" His hair was getting scary-big from the way he kept running his hands through it.

I decided that I better try to defuse the situation before he and Gerard really got into it. The kid, Grace, was ignoring all of us in favor of having a staring match with Mikey, but that was only going to last for so long. The last thing I wanted to do was scare her off. "You feed them, make sure they have somewhere safe to sleep at night, and they learn how to take care of themselves. It sounds simple enough."

Ray groaned in an unnecessarily dramatic way, and ran his hand through his hair again. "Why am I surrounded by idiots?" he asked the ceiling. 

I leaned into Gerard and whispered in his ear. "Do you think he's talking about us?"

Gerard twisted himself around so that he could stare at me, despite the fact that he and I were smushed together on the love seat. I just batted my eyelashes at him.

He choked down giggles, but the sound of his hiccupping laugh was still loud enough for everybody in the living room to hear. The room became abruptly quiet. When I looked up Mikey and Ray were staring at Gerard in shock. 

Ray recovered first. Brushing his hair back into its usual orderly shape. "Fine, I'll make up a bedroom upstairs for you to keep her in, but you two are going to have to figure out how we're going to teach her everything she needs to know. It's not like we can use edu-pads like we had when we were kids."

# # #

August 1, 2125: The House

# # #

It turned up being a responsible adult was both a hell of a lot more awesome and a hell of a lot more terrifying than I originally thought. 

The morning after we brought Grace home I went to wake her up, and almost had a heart attack when I found her bed empty. I then almost broke my neck when I tried to run down the stairs and slid down them instead after tripping over the runner. 

In the end the pain didn't really matter, because Grace was safe and sound and in the kitchen sharing a bowl of protein mash with Gerard.

Gerard hadn't made it to a single breakfast I'd made in three months and even before that it was hit and miss. More importantly was the fact that he was actually eating something for breakfast rather than downing cup after cup of sintho-cafe. He needed the weight so I wasn't going to mention his changed habit in case he stopped eating just to be pissy.

Instead I announced myself as loudly as I could, just to make him jump. Because while it was awesome that he was doing better he could have at least woke me up before getting Grace up. 

"Good morning!" I shouted

Gerard jumped a respectable distance out of his chair and had to grab onto the table to keep from tipping over. Grace giggled quietly to herself.

Gerard glared at me, pulling himself upright. "What the hell, Frankie?"

"You were the one who didn't tell me you and Grace were getting up early. Were you trying to eat all of the breakfast protein before I got any?" I asked in my most aggravatingly aggrieved voice, fluttering my lashes for added effect. 

Gerard froze. I snorted and went to make myself a bowl of mush. Grace was still giggling softly and Gerard was still doing his impression of a statue by the time I joined them at the table. I poked him with the spoon and his mouth finally snapped shut.

He went back to glaring at me, but he didn't say anything. HE probably knew that I'd trounce him into the ground if he tried to out talk me. He might not be as taciturn as Mikey but it was not like he was on my level of sheer inanity. I could talk him under the table even on one of his more vocal days.

Mikey and Ray stumbled down into the kitchen right about the same time we finished eating breakfast. Mikey took the seat next to Gerard and did a pretty good impression of falling back to sleep while Ray got both his and Mikey's mash. It felt like old times at the cafeteria. 

"I think we should go to the check in station today," Ray said around his mouthful of food.

"Why would we do that?" 

"Because if any of them anybody is going to know how we're allowed to get information and teach ourselves things it's going to be the lady in charge of the office. I mean who else are we going to ask?" He sent a look Mikey's way but it was impossible to tell if Mikey had fallen back to sleep or was actually awake enough to realize he's being glared at. "Except for Mikey, we don't have contact with any of the other unemployed and I'm not sure his friends are the kind of people we want to introduce Grace to."

I guess I wasn’t the only one who knew about Mikey’s night-time explorations.

I looked over to Grace to see if she has an opinion on what she wanted to do, learning-wise. I couldn't tell how old she was between her hair and her baggy clothes but I was willing to be that if she was old enough to figure out how to survive on her own without a Government assigned number or any schooling she was old enough to know what she wanted to do with her time.

I couldn't catch her eye though; she was hiding behind her hair again. "Well we can't take Gerard with us, so maybe just you and I should go. That way Mikey can see if any of his friends have any ideas while Gerard and Grace stay here."

"Why can't I come with you?" I want to help Grace." Gerard glared at both of us over his cup of sintho-cafe.

Ray and I shared a look. Neither of us wanted to have to explain to Gerard why he couldn't come with us.

Thankfully Mikey wasn't as asleep as he'd appeared and rescued us before we could stick our feet anywhere they didn’t belong. "You can't go with them because you haven't been taking your pills."

"I'm fine without them."

He totally wasn't, still going through the manic swings brought about by withdrawal, but that was another issue I wouldn't go near with a ten foot pole. 

Mikey propped himself up enough that he could roll his eyes in Gerard's direction. "It doesn't matter if you’re fine _or not_ they still won't have a problem taking you in for treatment if they realize you haven't been taking the pills." 

I was pretty sure it wasn't just my imagination that had Mikey putting extra emphasis on the 'or not.' Still, we didn't have time for a Way brother blood bath. And even if we did I didn't want to scare Grace off. 

"Anyway Grace can't come with us. According to the government she doesn't even exist. Who knows what they'll do if they catch her. So somebody has to stay with her here."

"Fine," Gerard growled. Grabbing his cup of sintho-café he stormed off towards the hallway. We could hear him stomping down the steps to the basement. Hopefully he'd come back out before we left. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Grace being down in the basement with all of the art supplies and Gerard's mess. Some of that stuff was totally toxic.

# # #

Ray and I came back to the house to find Gerard tearing the place apart, acting even more frantic then he usually was during his more violent fits of inspiration. We stood side by side in the foyer watching him, stunned.

He hadn't been like that in longer than forever. If Grace was having that much of an effect on him then maybe he was finally getting close to being completely over the withdrawal. It was something to hope for, since unless we sat on him or Mikey threatened some sort of truly terrible punishment he wasn't going to take even a partial dose the pills to make sure he didn’t get suicidal again.

Ray and I shared a conversation made up mostly of shoving, each of us trying to get the other to deal with Gerard's current mood. I lost of course. But that's only ‘cause Ray was huge and totally had an advantage, and I didn't like to cheat in friendly shoving matches. I could have totally taken him in a fight though.

I edged slowly into the living room where I could just see Gerard's butt sticking out from behind the loveseat. I was surprised he even fit there as close as it was backed up to the wall. Feeling more sure of myself since he didn't seem to have noticed me yet, I edged around the couch until I was between him and the door to the kitchen. Ray could be in charge of catching him if he went for the hallway and the door to the basement. 

"Gee?" I called.

He jerked a little but didn’t stop digging around behind the loveseat. 

"Gerard?" I called again, louder this time. "Do you need me to help you find something?"

This time at least I got a reply though was too muffled to make out what he said. It went something like. "I mphf MPHF!"

Ray didn't look like he understood that any better than I did, if his confused hair was anything to go by. Too bad Mikey hadn't beat us back. He would have made things so much easier.

"We need a little bit better of an explanation than that Gee," Ray finally said.

Gerard's head popped up from behind the loveseats back. His hair was clumped together with various pieces standing on end in a fairly good approximation of Ray's hairdo. The he yelled "I lost Grace!" and all thoughts of his ridiculous hair were banished from my mind by panic.

"How the heck could you lose her? We were barely gone for two hours." Great, now I was thinking about crawling behind the furniture and looking for her too. The things Gerard did to my sanity.

Thankfully Ray was his usual calm self. "She probably went back to wherever she was staying before she came here. There isn't any reason for her to stay if she got scared or upset." 

"But we didn't do anything to upset her!"

"Maybe not bout you have to remember she's a street kid and we don't know all that much about her. For all we know she's got siblings or a friend or something she was worried about. There's no way to tell." He looked over at me. "Did you ever figure out where she went home to when she wasn't in the alley?"

"No, I know it's in the opposite direction of the house, and the edge of the district is only a block or two away from the grocery store. Since she's not registered with the government it's really likely that she can pass District lines without getting picked up."

"Well shit!"

"Maybe if we stake out the alley?"

Ray gave Gerard his best evil eye. "We are not staking out the alley. If anything that will just scare her off. Maybe you and Frank can go there and leave food like you’ve been doing to if it comes to that, but it's just going to freak her out if we stake the place out."

"But she said she wanted to come with us!" Gerard wailed.

"It's only been two hours, there isn’t anything to say that she won't come back. Come into the kitchen. I'll make you a mug of sintho-café. You need to calm down."

Gerard was asleep on the couch within five minutes of drinking his mug of sintho-café."

"You drugged his drink didn't you?" 

Ray smirked and took another sip of his own mug of cafe. "I slipped one of Mikey's downers into it. I wasn't convinced that he wasn't going to do something stupid like go running around the neighborhood yelling for Grace."

"Do you really think she's coming back?"

"I don't know if she is or she isn't, but I do know that if she doesn't want to stay with us we can't make her, and given the fact that you went back to that alley at least once a week for over two months without seeing her I doubt we'll be able to find her if she doesn't want to be found."

 

# # #

Mikey got back to the house about the same time Gerard started to wake up from his "nap." I was extremely thankful for that because I did not want to have to break up a fight between Gerard and Ray on my own.

I particularly didn’t want to when I could understand both of their positions. I hated being drugged myself but we couldn't afford to go hunting Gerard through the city in the dark, especially not when neither Ray or I had a very good idea of what to expect when it came to the other Unemployed.

Ray had gone out with Mikey a few times, and I'd gone once or twice myself but that didn't mean we'd know what we were doing if the worse came to worst.

Besides if Gerard got stupid and ran across the district lines trying to find Grace we'd all be screwed.

Mikey was his usual quiet self when he came in. If I hadn't been too nervous to sleep I probably wouldn't have known he was even back.

He froze a few steps into the house and stared at the couch Gerard was draped over. His sprawled body completely opposite of how he usually slept. All curled up into a ball as tiny as he could make himself.

I expected him to demand answers about what we'd done to Gerard but all he asked was, "What's up?"

"Ray did it!" I yelled before running for the kitchen.

I could hear Ray's curses clear enough from there and totally wasn't taking the fall of Gerard's getting drugged. I was an innocent bystander when it came to the whole situation. That was my story and I was totally sticking through it.

And I didn't feel at all guilty for abandoning Ray to Mikey's epic bitch face. No seriously I didn't.

# # #

I gave Mikey and Ray until I finished brewing a carafe of sintho-café, to finish their fight. Gerard would be pissed enough about being knocked out without us having to worry about him plotting murder because he didn't get his habitual caffeine fix.

 

When I came out of the kitchen Mikey had retreated to the couch, with Gerard's head tucked safely onto his lap. While Ray, looking even more hunted then when I'd left him, was curled up into the corner of the love-seat farthest from the couch. When I handed him his cup of café he whispered. "You could have at least bought me some time to run."

I smirked instead of answering. Since Gerard still hadn't woken up the rest of the way I put his mug on the table, before handing Mikey his. 

I curled up into the chair opposite Ray. It was closer to the couch than his corner but I didn't have to worry about Mikey beating me up.

It took another hour before Gerard went from the occasional snuffle as the drugs started to wear off, to groaning himself awake. Mikey propped him up and shoved the now cold mug into his hands. 

He gathered it too his chest greedily and swallowed it down in two gulps. Only bothering to stick his tongue out at the taste after he'd finished it all off. "What happened?" He asked the room at large.

"Ray was worried you'd do something stupid so he slipped you one of my downers." Mikey answered for all of us. 

Gerard combined his glare with Mikey's for the infamous Way brother evil eye double team. If possible Ray seemed to shrink down even further into the cushions. Even his hair was drooping.

Now I was stuck feeling guilty for siccing Mikey on him in the first place, though he had deserved it.

"We didn't want you trying to follow Grace. She probably lives in another district and the Government might not care about her crossing the boundaries, they'll notice if we try something like that."

"I'd be careful," Gerard insisted.

Mikey was looking at me considering, "You think she can go between districts because she doesn't have a Government ID? So she’s not trackable?"

 

"That and the fact that she is just a kid and harmless. I doubt any of the gangs who have territory in the area care what she does." Glaring down at the mug I hated myself for saying what I was about to say. "She is safer out there on her own, then she would be if we drew attention to her, or to wherever she's hiding out."

 

Gerard squawked and looked ready to protest, but Mikey put a hand on his arm and he froze. 

 

Mikey looked at him over the edge of his glasses. "We'll look for her tomorrow."

"What if something happens to her before then?"

"We'll figure something out."

Reaching out, I grabbed the hand Mikey wasn't holding. "I promise I'll go out with you first thing in the morning to look for her, but for now we need to get some sleep."

He looked ready to protest, but a jaw-cracking yawn served the double purpose of shutting him up and proving my point. 

# # #

August 2, 2125: The House

# # #

 

When I woke up from where I was curled up in the living room’s chair I had to blink a few times before I believed what I was seeing. Grace was back. She’d curled herself up on against Gerard's side, The opposite of Mikey who Gerard was using as a pillow.

There was a torn up and taped box on the coffee table. It was filled with various odds and ends. I saw a brightly colored sleeve of a sweater, a few broken toys, and what looked like an old analog boom box, the type that was so old the government hadn’t even bothered to outlaw them for the unemployed. I doubted it even worked right. In fact I wasn’t sure anything in the box was worth any money. It reminded me more of the little box of treasures we’d hidden under Gerard’s bed when we were kids. Filled with drawings and gold stars. 

Still, it was kind of sad that this was the sum of Grace's life. One little box. I promised myself that we would make sure she had more now that she was living with us. It was the least we could do for someone who was going to be a part of our screwed up family, and who managed to break through Gerard’s withdrawal and depression and get him to care about living again.

 

Uncurling from the chair, I tip-toed over to the couch and shook her gently. Her eyes fluttered open after a few seconds. Her whole body tensed up.

 

I waited a second, and I made sure not to move in any way that she could confuse for threatening, and she relaxed back against Gerard’s side. He made a grumping sound in the back of his throat and burrowed further into Mikey's side.

 

I held my hand out to her. "Come on, let’s go make breakfast for them. Then we can wake them up."

 

It probably wasn't very nice to let Gerard sleep after I knew where Grace was but since he hadn't woken up to her curling up with him, I figured he was still sleeping off the drugs. Besides it wouldn't hurt to him to wait a few minutes until we had some food to help wake him up. 

 

She didn't take the hand I held out to her, but she did follow me into the kitchen. I pulled a chair up to the kitchen counter so that she could see; and started getting out the ingredients for pancakes. The flour was rough, and protein laced, but with enough fruit stuffed into the pancakes they wouldn’t be half bad. 

 

“Do you want to help me make teddy bear pancakes?" I asked her. She probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about, but you never knew. I knew about pancakes because my Mom used to make them for me back before I turned five and went off to school. Maybe Grace’s Mom had made them for her at one point.

 

She stared up at me for a second, before nodding . Her little chin only moved a fraction of an inch, but at least she was replying to me. I heated up the pan and prepared to make the teddy bears. She climbed up on the chair to watch.

Two little circle pancakes for ears. Then a second later I poured the batter for the big pancake. The one that would be the teddy bear’s head. 

 

I handed the her the spatula . "Can you please keep an eye on that. Once it has bubbles all over it, I'll show you how to flip it.”

She nodded again but her eyes stayed glued to the skillet. I hid a smile by turning my back so that I could dig though the cabinet for the supplies to make coffee. The small coffee pot went on the back burner where it would be out of the way if the batter splattered and the can of instant coffee went on the table where it would be virtually impossible to knock over. The one and only time I’d made the mistake of spilling the coffee I’d had to deal with epic drama from Mikey, Gerard, and Ray combined.

 

Once the water was taken care of I started digging through the cabinet for the dried fruit I knew I'd gotten a few months before I'd started cutting our rations to make sure we'd have enough to provide for Grace. I felt something poking me in the back. I jumped and just barely managed to keep from squealing. When I turned around it was just Grace and the spatula, the handle of which she seemed to be using to prod me. I reached out to grab it away from her, but stopped myself. I should have realized that if she wasn't going to talk then it would be difficult for her to tell me when the pancakes was done.

"Did it start to bubble?" I didn't wait for her to nod and hurried over to the pan. I grabbed a spare spatula from the drawer and carefully pushed it under the edge of the pancake so that I could see the bottom. 

Nice and golden brown. Pinching the teddy bear's ears between my fingers I used the spatula to flip the rest of the pancake over, and stuck my slightly burned fingers in my mouth when I was done.

Grace had climbed back up on her chair while I was distracted and was staring at the pancake again. I reached out slowly, so she'd know what I was doing, and ruffled her hair. "Thanks for letting me know it was done. Come get me again if I'm not back out of the pantry in a couple minutes, okay?"

She nodded. Her curls rubbed against my hand.

 

# # #

 

I eventually did locate the dried fruit. It was tucked up on the top shelf that I could barely reach and it looked like somebody had been eating from the bag. Probably Mikey or Ray. Gerard would have at least offered to share it with me. 

At least they left enough to make the pancakes with.

I carried the bag of fruit over to where Grace was still watching the pancakes. We were on our third teddy bear now. Ray and Mikey could totally have the two bears without fruit faces. They deserved it for eating the berries.

"We're going to give the teddy bears faces now!" I announced in a loud whisper. It would ruin the surprise if I accidentally woke the others up at this point.

She stared at me like I was crazy, which to be fair was kind of true. Just to prove I hadn’t completely lost my mind, I started making a little teddy bear face on the pancake that was still in the pan. Two little dried fruit eyes and a big snaggle-toothed dried fruit grin, just like my mom used to make. "See! I told you I was going to give him a face."

She didn't seem convinced, but she used her spatula to move the eyes around anyway. "See you’re great at making teddy bear faces! We’ll have to see what other faces you can make. Gerard always wants to put fangs on his." I whispered since I was pretty sure that Gerard was the key to her heart.

She stared up at me. I couldn’t tell if it was because she wanted to hear more about Gerard or just because she still thought I was crazy. 

"He totally does love vampires. Just wait and see. The basement has vampires and fanged teddy bears everywhere!"

She turned back to the pancakes. 

I smiled at the back of her hair. She was just too cute. I'd never really planned to have a kid, but if they were as awesome as her I’d have to reconsider. 

Mom had always helped me help her make teddy bear pancakes on Saturday mornings to wake my Dad up from his tough week of work.

It was nice to be able to share that kind of things with someone besides Mikey, Gerard, and Ray, who had family traditions of their own.

I flipped the pancake and she could see the dark spotches where the fruit eyes and mouth had sunk to the bottom of the batter. She reached out to poke at them, and I grabbed her wrist without thinking about it. It was just my first instinct. She froze. Her whole body tensed up. 

"Sorry, sorry.” I dropped her arm and backed a few steps away. "I just didn't want you to burn your fingers. Just use your spatula to poke at it."

She stayed on the far side of the chair while she poked at the pancake, keeping a wary eye on me the whole time. 

Not wanting to scare her more, I stayed back from the stove until it was time to flip the pancake out of the pan. And I made sure to approach the pan slowly when I did come back. Just to be on the safe side

 

I handed her the bag of fruit as a peace offering. "Do you want to put the face on the next one? It can be the one we give to Gerard."

She took the bag out of my hand, ever so carefully, so that she was a far as way from me as she could get without dropping the tiny bag. I made sure not to move.

She carefully dropped two eyes into the pancake and started to work on the mouth. It got a bright big smile. A few extra pieces of fruit on either side then the last pancake we'd made. Then she looked up at me seriously for a minute. I wondered what I was supposed to be doing. Then she actually spoke. It was only one word ‘Fangs!’ but I had to clamp down on the urge to hug the stuffing out of her.

No way did I want to scare her away.

"Fangs huh? Well I bet Gerard will like that." 

She smiled. 

I reached carefully into the bag keeping my movements slow and careful and pulled out six pieces of fruit. Then I made little triangles on either side of the smile. Where the fangs would be.

She smiled so big and bright that I couldn’t keep myself from grinning too.

# # #

I took the pan with us into the living room. Where the others were still sleeping. Grace was like a little shadow behind me. Once I was in the middle of the rom. I jumped up on the coffee table and gave her an exaggerated wink. Then I started pounding the spatula into the back of the pot. It clanged and its clangs made the others jump upright. Gerard fell off of the couch and landed on the floor between the couch and the coffee table. Mikey jumped but managed to keep his cool. I couldn't see what Ray did from where I was standing but I was willing to bet it was equally hilarious. "We made pancakes you lazy bums. So get up already!"

Mikey started cursing me out, under his breath. Ray didn't bother trying to muffle his curses. Gerard probably would have been cursing me too expect he was still busy untangling himself from where he’d fallen.

I was preparing to jump off of the coffee-table and make a run for the kitchen when Grace started giggling. It wasn't very loud but it was enough to get everybody’s attention. Even Gerard stopped wriggling about. "Grace?"

She jumped on his back, still giggling.

"Grace." Gerard's voice was almost reverent as he managed to twist himself around enough that he could pull her into a hug. Unlike with me she didn't try to wiggle away.

I started to grin. Looking at Mikey I saw that he was doing his own version of grinning, his Eyes soft and loving as he watched the two of them cuddle on the floor.

Since I was so busy staring at Gerard and Grace, I almost missed Ray sneaking past me towards the kitchen. I launched myself onto his back and grabbed his shoulders so he couldn't shake me off. "So it was you that stole the dried fruit! Villain! Ruffian!"

"Come on Frank, get off!" He reached behind him trying to get me to pry my hands off his shoulders.

"I shall not be vanquished!" I yelled just to make a point, since the way he was twisting around meant that I was only a few inches away from his ear.

He yelped and covered his ear. "Frank!"

"I told you I wouldn't be vanquished." I used his distraction to scamper the rest of the way up his back so that my arms were wrapped around his neck. "Onward to the kitchen!"

Gerard and Grace started giggling again and I almost thought I heard Mikey chuckling. It was almost like being a family again.

This was what I had hoped things would be like when we were sent away from the school, but I never thought it would happen again. It was the kind of stupid dream that kids had. So it was probably a good thing that I was still mostly a kid at heart.

Even if I was going to have to grow up a little; now that I was going to be a big brother to Grace.


End file.
